The Volunteer

by Salvatore Scibona

"Thrilling... Scibona has built a masterpiece." - The New York Times Book Review

"All of it -- all of it -- is just so ridiculously beautiful." - Jason Sheehan, NPR.org

"The rewards are enormous. This is a spectacular work of fiction." - San Francisco Chronicle

A long-awaited new novel from a National Book Award Finalist, the epic story of a restless young man who is captured during the Vietnam War and pressed into service for a clandestine branch of the United States government

A small boy speaking an unknown language is abandoned by his father at an international airport, with only the clothes on his back and a handful of money jammed in the pocket of his coat. So begins The Volunteer. But in order to understand this heartbreaking and indefensible decision, the story must return to the moment, decades earlier, when a young man named Vollie Frade, almost on a whim, enlists in the United States Marine Corps to fight in Vietnam. Breaking definitively from his rural Iowan parents, Vollie puts in motion an unimaginable chain of events, which sees him go to work for insidious people with intentions he cannot yet grasp. From the Cambodian jungle, to a flophouse in Queens, to a commune in New Mexico, Vollie's path traces a secret history of life on the margins of America, culminating with an inevitable and terrible reckoning.

With intense feeling, uncommon erudition, and bracing style, Scibona offers at once a pensive exploration of how we are capable of both inventing and discovering our true families and a lacerating interrogation of institutional power at its most commanding and terrifying. An odyssey of loss and salvation ranging across four generations of fathers and sons, The Volunteer is a triumph in the grandest traditions of American storytelling.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Novels, Contemporary, Adult

432 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 2019

About the author

He is an award-winning American novelist and short-story writer. He has won awards for both his novels and short stories, and was selected in 2010 as one of The New Yorker "Fiction Writers to Watch: 20 under 40"

Reviews

[Angela M · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
This was not an easy book to read. It’s a complex story, but my incentive to continue was the opening of the story where we see the world through the mind and eyes of Janis, a 5 year old boy left alone by his father, Elroy in the airport at Hamburg, Germany. I had to know what would happen to him. The story changes course and moves back from Janis’ present to a farm near Davenport, Iowa where a young man, nicknamed by his parents, the Volunteer and called Vollie suddenly leaves his parents to enlist in the Marines and is shipped off to Vietnam. The story becomes gritty and raw and we see the brutality of the war through the mind and eyes of this young Marine in the middle of it all. The descriptions of the things that happen here are stunning and explicit, stomach sickening at times, but felt so realistic. The writing is amazing. The descriptions of the bombs, the noise, the flashes, the fear, the death, the dreams as Vollie moves through Vietnam on a convoy make for an intense reading experience.

But then I have to admit I was confused after Vollie is forced to be a part of a secret operation, maybe CIA and government sanctioned, but never named. I was confused over what they wanted him to do and why. Perhaps I missed something. He was rescued after 412 days in a cave, in Cambodia as a prisoner. Cambodia , where the government would not admit he was. They could only keep him from prison, from being accused of desertion if he signed on for under cover work and a whole new identity.

The rest of of it Is like a puzzle as I tried to piece the individual parts together connecting the characters as the story moves around in time and from place to place. Later in the story we see Elroy as a child and then as an adult and we see how the characters are connected. It’s also not an easy book to review without giving away some of the plot, so I won’t say much more about what happens in these times and places. This is an ambitious novel about war and family with an ending that I didn’t expect. It wasn’t a perfect read for me, but I’m glad I persevered to find out what happened to Janis.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Penguin Press through Edelweiss.

[Cosimo · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Chi di noi ha vissuto una vita sola?”

“Lei non era sua perché nessuno possiede nessuno, in realtà. Non apparteniamo nemmeno a noi stessi. La bestia che è in noi ci ordina di fare centinaia di azioni aberranti, impossibili. Comprare la terra. Possedere una persona. Domare la bestia significa strapparla a sé stessa”.

Ogni storia di guerra è la storia di una fine. La fine di uno scontro, la fine di una battaglia, la fine di una vita, la fine di una missione, la fine della guerra stessa. Non importa quale lingua si parli, conosci il tuo antico nemico, porti con te il ricordo del gioco, il sogno del ritorno. Vollie Frade è incapace di sentimenti e decide di arruolarsi nei marines, senza un vero motivo. Parte per il Vietnam, trovandosi al centro della storia, nella catena segreta di violenza e morte, e poi prigioniero in Cambogia, per più di un anno, a sopravvivere ai compagni, fino a diventare nessuno, fino alla rimozione totale, obliqua, della sua identità. «Sto dicendo che tu ti guardi intorno come se il mondo fosse completo e funzionasse a meraviglia, e ci fosse solo una cosa che non va. Come se per renderlo perfetto bastasse tirartene fuori. Sparire, cioè». Rientrato in America, si nega al mondo e si trova a crescere il figlio di un compagno: un bambino nato in una specie di collettività aperta, dove le relazioni sono plurali, segnato per la vita dalla solitudine e dall'assenza, in grado di ascoltare solo il suono del dolore e del male. Soldato a sua volta; cieco di sangue che scorre, irrazionale e disperato. Vollie Frade invece è figlio di Annie e Potter, gente dell'Iowa, persone che hanno dovuto seguire la volontà, senza il privilegio di conoscerla. Per il singolo soldato in Vietnam tutte le cose non significavano niente, la mente inetta pensava solo a non fermare il convoglio, la mente profonda al nemico sottoterra che poteva disintegrarti ora e per sempre, all'assedio del mondo che brucia. Scibona con la sua scrittura che cammina narra la vita e la morte, la via sublime dell'amore, l'animale acquatico che è l'essere umano, vinto dalla paura priva di forma. Le anime sono azzurre e tristi, tra le creature è inevitabile riconoscere prede che diventano predatori, come un rapace falco, un bianco cerbiatto. Vollie lavora con diverse mansioni, vive anni magri, anni di amore; il figlio di Bobbie, l'altro soldato, Elroy, dopo l'esperienza militare nella modernità caotica e minacciosa, cerca di interrogarsi per un periodo di pace, cercando un legame straniero, con il quale diviene padre, lui che era nato nel fantasma di un paradiso, un'unione poligamica dove il sesso brucia ogni regola e ogni individualità, dove si mescolano essere e non essere. Così, tra storie intrecciate e corpi in equilibrio, Scibona narra le cose elementari, permette al lettore di apprenderle nuovamente, con la memoria dei personaggi che abbandona l'essere e ricorda il principio, l'ingresso nella natura. Scibona non dice se ci sia un Dio o un caos tra queste visioni, tra gli sguardi frequenti e le strade attraversate, dietro le sbarre o dentro le stanze: la sua passione ci invita in lande selvagge e oltre, verso una terra incontaminata che sta all'interno delle prime. Che questa storia nascosta dentro gli oggetti del romanzo si chiami immaginazione o letteratura non conta molto, forse, appunto, non significa niente. Le persone vivono insieme a chi è venuto prima di loro, non possono mai appartenere a nessuno, nemmeno la loro esistenza sembra appartenere all'autore. Sono un esercito, una prigione, un debito, un coltello, la brama di mondo che non si può estinguere. L'America, in queste pagine, diventa davvero nessun luogo. “Tra tutti quegli spettri, solo Trisha rispose. Nel corso degli anni aveva incontrato la ragazza nelle sue visioni con la stessa frequenza con cui gli era capitato di incontrare gli altri, e ogni volta, al pari di tutti gli altri, lei aveva distolto lo sguardo, come se in mezzo agli spettri lui fosse riuscito a diventare quel nessuno che aveva sempre desiderato essere”. L'infelicità che Scibona sceglie di consegnare al lettore consiste in una ininterrotta serie di sospensioni, di attraversamenti residuali, di salti nel vuoto e scostamenti, di incontinenze psichiche. Così arriviamo al nipote del protagonista, Janis/Willy, in Lettonia e in Germania; un bambino che ha il destino sconfitto di un orfano interiore, di una piccola persona priva di origine. Scibona riesce a mantenere viva la tensione narrativa e costruisce una narrazione forte, con uno stile serrato e lirico, coniugando livelli di racconto sovrapposti e affrontando su molteplici piani le scelte morali e gli impulsi universali. Scrivendo, quindi, un destino corale, marginale e indifeso, sempre in assoluta insicurezza, tra il momento ordinario e quello epico.

“La lezione era questa: qualsiasi cosa amassi così tanto, che ovunque ti giravi vedevi il modo in cui l'avresti persa, prima o poi ti sarebbe stata tolta”.

[piperitapitta · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Sono Nessuno. Tu chi sei? / Anche tu sei Nessuno?»
[Emily Dickinson]



Inizia tutto all’aeroporto di Amburgo nel 2010, ma in realtà è tutto iniziato sessantaquattro anni prima in una fattoria dell’Iowa quando il Volontario era venuto al mondo.

Un romanzo complesso, stratificato, frammentato, ambizioso, il cui denominatore comune fra i tre personaggi protagonisti - Eugene “Vollie” Frade (ma anche Il Volontario, Dwight Tilly) - Elroy (figlio di padre e madre ignoto, ma anche di Till) e Janis (ma anche Willy, figlio di Elroy), è l’identità: non intesa come identità anagrafica, come appartenenza geografica, religiosa o sociale, ma come la conseguenza di avvenimenti accaduti anche prima della nostra nascita, di eventi che ci hanno segnato, di episodi che hanno scolpito, incidendosi nel nostro essere, la natura di ogni individuo, di scelte e decisioni che ci hanno portato a diventare quello che siamo, o scegliere di non essere ciò che eravamo destinati a diventare.
Cosa siamo, dunque, noi, se non il risultato di tutto questo? Siamo più veri il giorno in cui venuti al mondo ci viene assegnato un nome e con quello un’identità ufficiale, o quando la vita e le nostre azioni ce ne assegnano un altro o ci mettono nelle condizioni di doverlo scegliere? La nostra identità è allora una convenzione, la risultanza di una serie di esperienze o il destino che era già tracciato prima della nostra nascita?

Le storie diverse e debitrici l’una all’altra di Till, Elroy e Will, che si susseguono nell’arco di cinquant’anni (ma anche di più, se si contano le origini dei Frade nell’Iowa rurale) attraverso la guerra del Vietnam e quella in Afghanistan e in Medioriente, che attraversano la Lettonia per poi cercare nuove radici in New Mexico e in Germania, che seguono percorsi individuali mostrando esiti del tutto diversi tra loro, sono tre storie di fuga da se stessi e dalla propria identità, di ricerca, di rinascita e di fallimento, destinate a segnare l’una il percorso dell’altra, l’una la sopravvivenza dell’altro, l’una il risultato dell’altra.
Bello a tratti e con un finale disperato e luminoso, capace di regalare personaggi secondari memorabili, dispersivo e involuto (per gusti personali) dall’altra, ma indubbiamente un’opera di valore, che merita di essere presa in considerazione e di essere letta con continuità e una dedizione e un’attenzione pressoché totali.

«Lui viveva in un altro mondo, era un’altra persona allora. Davvero pensava che lei non lo capisse, o che lei stessa non avesse giocato allo stesso gioco? Chi di noi ha vissuto una vita sola?»

Qui una bella recensione.

[Paltia · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely intelligent page turner that’s as complex as they come. Nothing is as it seems. This one gripped me as I stayed awake till the break of dawn to finish. Nothing like what I expected.

[Mike A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Volunteer by Salvatore Scibona is a solid work of contemporary literature and also a good read. I stayed up most of the night to finish it -- on a work night no less, so yea, it grabs! Mr. Scibona writes with a matter-of-fact judiciousness that feels sensitive even as it denies sentiment. There is no overt flourish, but the author's voice endows the reader's mind with insight's of deep intuitiveness only granted to some and only through experience. It is not without effort, but the discerning reader becomes this book's characters and knows discomfort, fear, shame, and love... and has been challenged to go places they would not go. The distribution of the reviews for this book may ultimately not reflect it's worth. To challenge the reader, to allow characters to have deep expertise and to allow them to discourse on it, to allow both moral excellence and moral frailty in the same character, to inspire, to disappoint, to disgust, to make readers rut in their own humanity such as they may find it, is probably not the best business model. This is not a fairy tale. This is not flippant entertainment. It is knowledge. It is food. It is lovely. It does engross. It is a "page turner." But the reader is expected to learn things here.

This is the story of a family of men. Three generations of them, although the first generation, the patriarch, so to speak, is technically not so due to biology but rather to proximity. This family's story, as it is told here, resolves to a missed opportunity that probably wasn't even there, and that is the patriarch's story and the theme of the book, and yea, I'm not telling you much about the story except what to expect in the telling of it. It is told honestly and mostly linearly. The book begins and ends with a slice of the grandson's story and between these narrative book-ends the reader comes to know the entire life of Volly, who, like many people, just wants the freedom to exist without any familial or emotional ties or responsibilities. To that end, and unlike most people, he does not presume to demand much from this life or from anyone else living in it -- or tries not to, but neither does he offer much, or so he expects.

This is a work that seems at first to have ambiguous motivations, not from the characters, but as to what it will be about and how it will present itself, as though this was the author's intent: to be ambiguous. There are bad guys (characters), but they are difficult to look at. They are our family. The human family. The complicated ones; the pathetic ones who hurt us. And there are good guys (characters), but unless they are not critical to the story, they are deeply flawed, or are they? This book talks war; it talks killing, it talks decency. It talks of surviving and of living well, and of selfishness. The good the bad and the ugly of all of it. Upon some reflection however, the statement of what this book is crystallizes to a critical commentary on murder and to a lesser extent the limits of love, while all the while trying to romanticize honestly what honestly cannot be romanticized.

Fyi, I have absolutely no connection with this author, publisher, etc. In fact, I may have stolen a galley copy, but enough about me! It's a good book, and worthy.

This is the redemptive literature of other people's missed opportunities, and of reaffirmingly positive human role models. This is the sober literature of social criticism, but it is not boring. Read it!

[pierlapo quimby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Con il secondo romanzo Scibona conferma il suo sopraffino, smisurato e forse persino eccessivo talento.
Il volontario è un romanzo ricco di personaggi memorabili, di contesti e panorami diversi, anche di scarti laterali che paiono vicoli ciechi e forse invece non lo sono. Si muove in avanti e indietro nella vita di Vollie, che seguiamo sin dall'infanzia in Iowa (e abbiamo il neo mid-western), poi in Vietnam (e abbiamo il racconto di guerra), nel Bronx (spionaggio e vita di quartiere metropolitana), New Mexico (casa-fattoria comune e libero amore) e al New Mexico si ritorna (buen retiro in comprensorio recintato), non prima di aver fatto un giro a Riga nel post-indipendenza e qualche sosta ad Amburgo (in compagnia di un comprimario, una comparsa, un personaggio di contorno insomma, che però ci appare in tutta la sua gigantesca statura), con una micro incursione nel financial tale post Lehman Brothers (un capitolo contenente minuziose descrizioni sulle possibilità di realizzo connesse all’amministrazione fiduciaria di un trust); insomma, si parte da Calamus, Iowa nel 1948 a e si finisce in Namibia, nel 2029.
Ma tutto questo conta poco o molto, non saprei, alcune scelte narrative, alcuni snodi non li ho del tutto compresi, forse poteva concentrare l’opera, ricavarne ancora più succo, renderla più riconoscibile da lontano, come un solido geometrico da tenere in mano, ma la verità è che Scibona scrive come un dannato, potente ed elegante, anche indecifrabile quando serve.
Sembra il Don DeLillo che Don DeLillo non è, cioè mi spiego: io che non ho sciolto le riserve sul più noto altro scrittore italo-americano credo di ritrovare nella penna di Scibona le cose che si dicono di DeLillo, ma è una curiosa sensazione che non so definire, una sorta di transfert al contrario, suppongo perché vorrei tanto che mi piacesse DeLillo e invece Zero K l’ho abbandonato indispettito a due terzi.
Quindi, in conclusione: Scibona qui s’è preso più rischi rispetto al romanzo d’esordio (5 stelle extra lusso), tanti di più e forse non tutti hanno pagato, ma è quel che doveva fare e, comunque, spacca di brutto lo stesso.

[Gianni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ci sono libri che a volte lasciano un senso di “sospensione”, come avere un conto aperto, non perché appaiano in qualche modo incompiuti o incompleti, ma perché l’autore chiama il lettore a rifinire la storia e i personaggi, e alla fine la storia rimane dentro, con quel sapore di vuoto e di abbandono. È un po’ la sensazione che ho provato leggendo Il volontario, un racconto frammentato che coinvolge molti personaggi, spesso appena abbozzati, e si estende per quattro generazioni in un lungo arco temporale, futuro compreso, e già l’avvio è duro, con l’abbandono di Janis, il bambino dell’ultima generazione, lasciato dal padre all’aeroporto di Amburgo.
Tutta la storia, però, narra di abbandoni e di rinunce, che fanno pensare al Volontario "Qualsiasi cosa amassi così tanto, che ovunque ti giravi vedevi il modo in cui l’avresti persa, prima o poi ti sarebbe stata tolta. Perfino la vita. Perciò Vollie aveva un mantra [...] Non significa niente", di volontà di sparire ("…lei aveva distolto lo sguardo, come se in mezzo agli spettri lui fosse riuscito a diventare quel nessuno che aveva sempre desiderato essere."), di fughe e di rinuncia a tutto ciò che può essere posseduto ("Sono le persone che appartengono ai luoghi, non il contrario") di annichilimento del proprio io ("La macchina del corpo è in pace con sé stessa, e conosce solo la pace. L’altra struttura, la struttura di comando, la mente, i nervi, è lei che soffre, che ha paura e conosce il conflitto. Per cosa poi? Quando potevi essere solo quattro membra, un bacino, una testa, un tronco? [...] Smetti di chiamarti con il tuo nome, che ormai non è più il tuo nome."), di cambi di identità. E in molte parti del libro la storia corre, con frasi brevi che sostengono un ritmo veloce e un po’ sincopato, quasi come se non dovesse rimanere nulla del testo e della vita che stanno scorrendo. Padre (Vollie, il Volontario) e figliastro (Elroy) conducono la stessa battaglia quasi con le stesse armi, ma con risultati completamente diversi. L’ambiente intorno è quello marginale, anonimo, spesso delle zone desertiche degli Stati Uniti o della foresta del Vietnam, o dei luoghi delle missioni militari in giro per il mondo, che tengono insieme la volontà di annullarsi e l’istinto di sopravvivenza.

Ne viene fuori una storia potente, che ha un po’ di Wim Wenders e un po' di Clint Eastwood, e che mi ha fatto tornare alla mente un passo di Le famose patate, di Joe Cottonwood: "se fai in modo che il tuo, nome, il tuo vero nome non compaia su nessun documento, allora sei invisibile. Non sei che una patata fra le tante. Le patate sono invisibili, appunto."




Salvatore Scibona al Circolo dei lettori di Torino.

[Patrizia Galli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il Volontario è Vollie Frade, nato da genitori vecchi e stanchi, incapaci di avere molti desideri all’infuori del loro lavoro alla fattoria in Iowa; Vollie è un trasformista di identità, vuole fuggire quella catena di sangue che per lui sono i legami familiari e per farlo decide, senza pensarci troppo e ancora minorenne, di arruolarsi nel corpo dei marines. Sono gli anni della guerra nel Vietnam.

La guerra in Vietnam, oltre ad aver portato la morte di migliaia di civili e soldati, distrugge anche la vita dei sopravvissuti, come il Volontario, che miracolosamente scampato a 412 giorni di prigionia in un tunnel sotterraneo in Cambogia, scopre ben presto che la sua vita di prima non può più esistere, che se vuole rimanere Vollie Frade sarà considerato un disertore. Questo, però, non lo destabilizza, ma, al contrario, lo illumina: vede finalmente una via di fuga dalla sua vita, vede concretizzarsi il suo desiderio più grande: diventare Nessuno. Desideroso di rimanere nient’altro che corpo, di fare esperienza del mondo tralasciando l’intralcio della coscienza, di abbandonare quella che finora è stata la sua identità, Vollie accetta il compromesso, accetta di cancellare il suo passato e l’amore per i suoi genitori per diventare “nessuno”: assume il nome di Dwight Tilly. Vollie/Tilly finisce così tra le fila di un sistema spionistico prima e, successivamente, a vivere nel deserto con una donna che ha vissuto in una piccola comune hippie (e che si occupa del figlio nato in questa comune…). Da quel figlio si arriverà fino all’aeroporto di Amburgo, in un intricato gioco di destini e decisioni sbagliate.

Anche lo sparire senza lasciare traccia, però, richiede un prezzo. Molto alto delle volte. Perché una scelta ne influenza altre cento, in un susseguirsi di fughe, drammi esistenziali, violenza e disumanità. Perché per Vollie la fuga sembra essere la risposta logica ad un’identità fortemente bramata: scappare altrove, trovare una via d’uscita da una vita già scritta sembra essere l’unica carta valida da giocarsi per scoprire chi è, per sentirsi parte del mondo. Vollie rifugge il suo debito di sangue, ma si accorge ben presto che «era proprio a quelle persone e al debito che aveva con loro che non doveva pensare, che si rifiutava di pensare, e che alla fine l’uomo che era diventato non avrebbe mai imparato a smettere di pensare. A lungo, dopo che Vollie Frade era scomparso quasi del tutto dalla sua mente, sua madre e suo padre – a cui aveva voltato le spalle per affrontare il vuoto che gli appariva come la sua vera casa – avrebbero continuato ad abitare il suo mondo interiore, con una dolcezza terrificante.». La fuga non ci rende Nessuno, semplicemente ci rende latitanti alla nostra coscienza, ma i fantasmi che la abitano non smettono mai di perseguitarci, in un modo o nell’altro. Le scelte di Vollie influenzeranno tutte quelle delle persone che entreranno in contatto con lui, fino ad una resa dei conti finale che ne rivendicherà il prezzo.

[Lucia lulu1538 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro che lascia il segno e ti porta a viaggiare nel tempo e nei luoghi che non avresti mai immaginato. Finito il libro mi sono chiesta: ma chi è davvero il protagonista? È una trama ricca e densa che si dipana nel tempo e tocca più vite che si intrecciano tra loro. Mi è piaciuta molto la scrittura così dettagliata e ricca di particolari che ti coinvolge e ti cattura fino alla fine. Direi che è il libro più bello letto negli ultimi anni. Un capolavoro? Direi proprio di sì, anche se è un termine che non uso quasi mai. Leggetelo. Saranno ore ben spese!

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I suppose it's well known by now The Volunteer opens in the Hamburg airport. But then Scibona wildly diffuses his novel as if that 1st chapter is a Big Bang. For me, the novel didn't begin to coalesce again till p247. But the narrative bringing us to that point is made of prose which propels itself with the relentless purpose of a locomotive, stitching all the elements together neatly as a zipper.

That relatively quiet 1st chapter, fraught as it is with an abandoned child, abruptly erupts into Vietnam. For the novel's purposes it's the original sin troubling America and America's presence in today's Middle East.

For me that powerful prose is the strength of the novel. A reviewer has suggested it's Denis Johnson-like. It is that, particularly in evoking characters on the margins of convention, or descended into the substrata of an America where most of us don't go. However, Don DeLillo is here, too. The furtive enterprise underlying the narrative reads a little like DeLillo's sinister coercions we can't control. Scibona's characters have conversations reminding me of DeLillo characters. The narrative voice compelling the characters' Freudian actions is most like Johnson. When they speak, however, they often speak DeLilloese. And occasionally I caught a whiff of Cormac McCarthy's strong evocations of the southwest, where this novel sometimes goes. So you can imagine such a heady goulash of prose can make for delicious reading.

If the novel breaks apart like the early universe, Scibona skillfully reintegrates it into a masterfully told and intellectually stimulating whole. This is one of the best novels I've read this year.

[Madeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just didn’t find myself wanting to continue onwards. The beginning put me off a lot, and the main character didn’t seem that redeeming. I also don’t think I’m in the mood for a war novel right now... it’s rather dark.

I do think the writing is strong, so if you think this sort of book might be more up your alley, then definitely try it out!

[Mihal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Świetna książka!

[Brie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won this book in a Goodreads First Reads contest.

I really wanted to like this book. It had a promising storyline and I started to read it.

I have decided in 2019 to only read a few chapters of books that do not grab my attention. I do not want to waste my time struggling through a book that just does not suit me. This book falls into that category.

I had a hard time following the plotline. I usually can easily read even the most non-conventional plots in books but the writing in this one seemed so choppy that I had confusion figuring out what was going on. I seriously thought the child was a human bomb at first because the way his abandonment at the airport was portrayed was so confusing in writing. I had no idea what was being written and why.

This "WTF?" Feeling continued as the story unfolded and I just had little interest in where the story was going so allowed the weird way the story we unfolding to pull me out of the story.

This was a resounding DNF. So disappointing. I will pass it on to soneone who may like this book better than me.

[Jonathanrwilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is stunning in many ways -- the quality of the writing and the sweep of the story that it tells are astounding. Scibona writes perfect sentences, and is also able to create some truly memorable characters. I want to give this book 5 stars (the writing is that good, and the ambition is enormous), but in the end for me there was a certain lack of humanity in several of the protagonists that kept me from being able to emotionally connect with the story. I realize, of course, that part of the point of the book is what a lack of human connection can do to a person, but I still feel like Scibona could have done more. Still, this book will break your heart and leave you thinking.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of my least favorite books that I managed to keep reading. There were just too many words. And I liked words. But these words were jumbled up like a puzzle in an attempt to be descriptive and honestly there were times when I I had no idea what I was reading. And after all that slogging, the ending sucked too.

[Steven Z. · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is sometime in 2010 and a five year old boy has been abandoned at the Hamburg-Fuhlsbuttel International Airport. So begins Salvatore Scibona’s second novel, THE VOLUNTEER a searing story that spans over forty years from the Vietnam War to the post- 9/11 Afghanistan encompassing four generations of fathers and sons that takes the reader from Latvia, Vietnam, Queens, New Mexico among many locations. Once the boy is introduced wandering the airport as others try to determine his identity and story, Scibona introduces Elroy Heflin, a former convict who resorted to a myriad of lifestyles from stocking a grocery store, slinging heroine, sleeping in shelters and on the street to survive. He was soon arrested and joined the army to get his life straight. Later, he is assigned to the Office of Defense Cooperation attached to the American Embassy in Riga, Latvia.

Heflin will develop a relationship with a woman named Evija who upon becoming pregnant refuses Heflin’s offer to marry. Five years later while serving in Afghanistan, paying one- third of his pay in child support he learns that Evija has abandoned their son Janis who he sees twice a year and wants him to take custody. Heflin will take Janis to the airport to catch a flight to London but decides to leave him in a toilet cubicle at the Hamburg airport before continuing on his way home.

Scibona is a master of shifting scenes from one character to the next. In the first major instance he moves on from Heflin for about half the book and focuses on Mr. Tilly or Vollie Frade who was Heflin’s guardian until he had reached the age of eighteen. In telling Vollie’s life story we learn that he too was an unwanted son, born to aging cattle ranchers outside of Davenport, IA and at the age of seventeen forged his parent’s signature and joined the Marines winding up in Vietnam. Vollie is a complex character who is preoccupied with erasing his identity. Throughout the novel there are scenes where he seems to be taking himself away. For example, when he is a small boy his parents burn his clothes to prevent an outbreak of meningitis, for Vollie they are burning him. During his tenure in the Marines, he finds himself captured in Cambodia, a mission the government says does not exist – then does he? Later, during bouts of PTSD he again questions his existence.

Scibona’s description of the war in Southeast Asia is reminiscent of the works of Dennis Johnson, Karl Marlantes, Michael Herr, and Tim O’Brien. It is raw in conception digging deeply into the stupidity of the American role in Vietnam. The scenes described as Vollie acts as a “Santa Claus” type of character driving in a convoy distributing mail, supplies, and anything else needed to the front lines reflects the absurdity of war. The discussion surrounding the US invasion of Cambodia and what occurs has a “Apocalypse Now” type of reality as do other scenes in the novel, particularly after he returns from Vietnam and Vollie finds himself ensconced in Queens, NY conducting a spy mission on a Social Security swindler who may turn out to be a Nazi fugitive.

Intergenerational misery dominates the plot as we move from place to place. A priest trying to crack the mysteries of Janis’ birth in Germany, a commune in Nevada and on and on. This is a very difficult novel to follow. At times it feels as if you are reading a Kurt Vonnegut novel taking place in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Despite a number of difficulties there are a number of portrayals of America that are priceless. The 1973 description of Queens, NY is priceless from the stoops, woman in house dresses, pickup basketball, church fellowship etc. Scibona has captured the neighborhood perfectly and this goes along with his striking social commentary.

The characters are lost in their own worlds especially Vollie whose view of life is one who is disappointed in himself and life in general as moving from one lie to another no matter how honest some appeared to be. Lorch, the spy handler’s quoting of scripture really plays no purpose, but he seems to do so each time he appears. Louisa, like Vollie is saddled with the burdens of the past as she cares for a baby out of a commune that practiced free love. Elroy, as he matures, like Vollie he replays scenes of a boyhood of abandonment.

The phrase that captures the essence of the novel is Vollie thinking about how “am I nobody from nowhere” as he and other characters try to maneuver in lives that do not turn out the way they want. The concept of identity appears repeatedly – for Vollie does he have one since he tries to cut himself off from everyone and everything.

To Scibona‘s credit his descriptions are often entertaining, but also sarcastic and draining. He has a keen eye for detail and many of his scenes seem similar to other works of literature and film. Overall, it was a difficult book to read, and I would only recommend it for someone who has a great deal of time to devote to understanding what the author is trying to say and enjoys a dark story that can be very painful.

[Josef Miyasato · Rating 3 out of 5]

I give this is 3.85 out of 5. I wanted to love this novel. In many parts I did. The caveat I'll give this book is that I listened to it. I could never see the language. With this book you need to. However, perhaps it would have distracted me from giving an honest review. The writing is that good in parts. It's like a beautiful woman. She will distract you from a dozen flaws. And this book has them.

In no particular order I'll give my gripes:

A) Not all writing serves the plot.
The fact that these men did not eat more than merely to survive. But they did not eat like wolves either. They ate like wolves who detested food, who did not have bodies to fill. The point was overdone. It began to distract me.

B) These men were unfeeling. Some men are. But what caused this? In the end I could not buy into their motivations. They seemed to have none. Men don't always make sense. This is to be expected. But these men didn't make sense in all the same way. It was as if the author had a type of person, a mold that he needed to justify no matter how empty it remained, how devoid of believable motivation:
.1) Volley's (I may have spelled this wrong on account I haven't seen it spelled before (a real Volley thing to say)) parents were good. So why was it so easy to cut them off?
.2) He kept on volunteering again and again. So why was it so difficult to accept the black ops job afterwards?
.3) And why was this girl, who he barely knew, why did she haunt him unlike his dead father, or his abandoned mother, or the man-child Elroy, who he so easily cast off up until the bitter end? Why was he so eager to save the boy he had never met?
.4) Why the dramatic aversion to money? Did he inherit this from his father, who also had an aversion to not having it, but to spending it on trivial matters?
.5) And again, why did he volunteer so many times? His clothes burning was not convincing enough for me. His parents loved him. Their disagreement over money wasn't enough.
.6) His psychic break came with his health scare and the burning of the clothes. This seemed to come out of nowhere. It didn't seem to match the tone of his life up to this point.

C) Where was the love, the empathy for character? I felt like the author had none. I felt that this book was too cold, to devoid of a wider range of actions and emotions. This does not mean I did not like it. This doesn't mean it was totally unconvincing. But it was enough to distract me for a very long time.

I have been trying to write a book with similar themes, which is why I picked it up in the first place. And I am glad I read it for an example of what didn't work for me, of what to avoid. Still for those who love literature, who aren't afraid of stories that bleed, I'd still recommend it.

[Nikki · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got my hands on an ARC through the variety box delivered to my work back in October.
I read about a hundred pages and had to put it down. DNF.
The premise was....enough to pick the book up, I guess. But my investment existed exclusively with the "protagonist's" (if we can call him that) son. I didn't have much investment in him or his motives. To me, he was one-dimensional - he was a better representative of love and praise for the male ideal and the garbage excuses men use for why they idolize blinding stupidity than a character. I don't know how or why I was supposed to take a personal investment in someone so self-centered, especially when his kid had the tragic backstory.
Anyway, if there was supposed to be more of a story beyond that, I didn't get there. If there was something with pacing that wasn't "man whines about why he's such an asshole," it should've started there instead of introducing us to an insufferable, generic character with the intent for us to feel sympathy for him.

[Bill Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not an easy read, neither in subject matter nor style, but patience and persistence are rewarded in the end with compelling and descriptive prose, complex (perhaps even to the point of inscrutability) characters, and a story that is gripping and expansive (if never fully explained). Not everything works, and the parts maybe never fully cohere into a perfectly satisfying whole, but I won’t forget this one anytime soon.

[lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I received an ARC of this book I read most of it over lunch breaks, and annoyed my co-workers by constantly changing my mind about this book. Did I like it, or did I hate it? Was a piece of misogynist war-porn , or a complicated reflection on men and their influences? I had to spend a few days processing this book, which is what led me to giving it a reluctant three stars. Something that made me think so much earns an extra star, even if I didn't like what the book ultimately had to say.

The story jumps around a lot, and as soon as you find your groove with one character, the narrative changes time, place, and circumstance, and you have to catch your breath with the next character. The story in a nutshell boils down to several generations of men whose decisions (and ultimately their fates) are the consequences of each other. Vollie is a an Iowa farm boy who joins the Vietnam war, then ends up in remote southern New Mexico. Elroy is the child of free love hippies who struggles to control his violent impulses by joining the army. Janis is a frightened young boy who is abandoned at a German airport with very little knowledge about himself. These men's stories sound like they are completely isolated from each other, and they are, but they are interconnected in ways that only become obvious on reading the whole book.

And this book is a bitch to get through. It has paragraph long sentences, a writing technique that never fails to annoy me. It has long, intense descriptions of Southeast Asia circa 1970. It waxes on about the cold bleakness of a New York City winter, and the starkness of a New Mexico landscape. It talks a lot about what is ultimately nothing, but it took me almost two hundred pages to realize that. Once I found out a lot of the writing is pointless filler, I was able to skim through the pontificating and get through the book much faster. The bones of the men's story is riveting, and I was truly interested to see what would befall the male characters. I stayed up way too late to finish this because I was so invested in what would happen to this motley crew. The story is incredible, and the male characters are flawed and stunning in ways that is so unique from each other. And of course I'm a sucker for any book where the state of New Mexico is such an obvious character. I loved that the author wrote a lot about southern New Mexico, particularly Dona Ana and McKinley counties. So many authors dismiss Southern New Mexico, but it is a unique in its landscape and commerce and general population, and I thought the author did a great job of showcasing that without being offensive.

What I didn't love about the book was it's complete disregard for women. The only female character with any substance is Louisa, and she was clearly a character written by an author who didn't care to get into the muck of her character. Her reasoning for the choices she makes don't make any sense at all, and her ultimate regrets are so contrived and pitiful. There are parts of her that make sense if you look at her through the view of the male characters who do nothing but stomp cluelessly around different countries, and states, in the name of the US armed forces. These characters don't see her story as being worthy, and it seems like the author (focused as he is on his icky men) doesn't take the time to give her any nuance, I guess also concluding that she is not worthy.

I personally see this book as a novel about how stupid and useless men are to each other, and how they can only process the world through war, isolation, and pain, which ultimately leads to their isolation from each other. There is a beauty to this novel, despite some of the obnoxious things about it. The journey of the three men, Vollie, Elroy, and Janis are the saving grace of this book. Everything else about this book, from the long, ridiculous descriptions; to the flat, whiny women; to the absolutely appalling acts of the men are all cringingly terrible, and make this book very hard to read. However, the little bits of beauty under all that rubble will be nice to read, and this book will likely provoke something in you, even if it's an eye roll for its treatment of women characters, or an impatience for pointless descriptions of a POW camp.

[Chris Wharton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A new name for me, and an impressive voice. The author’s second novel, it follows a twisting route through and around America’s wars of the past half century (and, briefly, into future ones) through some unlikely characters who make up sort of a family: Vollie, the survivor of three enlistee Marine tours in Vietnam, including Khe Sanh in 1968 and a later black ops mission into Cambodia that has lifelong consequences for him; Louise, a survivor of a 1970s free love commune in the New Mexico desert; and Elroy, the commune’s sole offspring, who as a small child is left with Louise (though she is not his mother) after the commune’s demise and whose decision as an adult to enlist in America’s 21st-century wars has unforeseen consequences for himself and others. These three characters’ stories and development, their stateside hardscrabble struggles, and the interplay among them are as much at the heart of the novel as the wars and other background elements of the times. Only Vollie’s war experiences are described at length and in detail; this is very well done, reminiscent of Nguyen Viet Thanh, Karl Marlantes, and Denis Johnson, and I was often reminded also of Don Delillo’s Underworld, especially in regard to the shadow Vollie’s Cambodia experience casts. A somewhat mystifying ending didn’t work so well for me, and at times the narrative is not the smoothest in raising philosophical questions of identity, connection, self-knowledge, memory, etc. But I had no trouble reading on in what is quite an impressive work.

[Paolo Latini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il Volontario è Eugene Frade, soprannominato the Volunteer, il Volontario, dai genitori appena nato, che per tutta la vita continueranno a chiamarlo Vollie. Ma si sa, in nome omen, e questo per Scibona vale anche per i soprannomi. Frase si arruolo volontario nell'esercito americano e parte per il Vietnam, dove combatte alcune importanti battaglie (Dong He e Keh Sanh), ma viene coinvolto in un'operazione strategica segreta statunitense. Unico superstite, Frade accetterà di scomparire e rinascere sotto il falso nome di Dwight Elliot Tilly, e prestare servizio per una misteriosa agenzia di intelligence in una missione nel Queens degli anni '70. Assisterà a azioni ai limiti estremi della moralità, sospese tra la banalità del male e la difficoltà di essere veramente liberi e scegliere volontariamente il bene. Passerà una vita clandestina, tra i rimasugli di una comune in New Mexico e i casi della vita che lo riporteranno a quell'indissolubile legame con i chiaroscuri morali dell'agenzia di intelligence per cui è stato strumento, volontario ma anche in un certo senso inerte. Diventerà patrigno, tutore legale, rinnegato, confuso osservatore della nuova Vietnam nel Medioriente del nuovo millennio e si chiederà fino alla fine quanto possiamo veramente essere volontari e responsabili delle proprie azioni, in un mondo dove il male deriva comunque da scelte umane.
Capolavoro.

[Jim Steele · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a rather odd story. First, a young boy appears in a European airport speaking an Eastern European language no one understands. Soon, it is clear that he has been abandoned.
The story flashes to a teenager from Iowa who escapes his life on a farm and the parents who don’t understand him by joining the army. He is assigned to a special operations unit where he sees horrible things in Vietnam. He is unable to adjust to his post-war life. He fathers this son by a prostitute, but he doesn’t learn about him until he is a few years old. He begins a trip to America with the boy but leaves him in the airport.

The novel has two plot lines: how the father came to the decision to leave the boy and how the boy comes to adjust to being an orphan. While the story is well told, it was a bit unbelievable for me. I never quite bought that the father would start out with the boy only to abandon him. I get it that Vietnam gave the man demons that I could never understand (having never been in the military). I liked the scenes of the father with former leader in the military and the strange father-son relationship depicted there.

But even though there was much here that I liked, in the end, I didn’t really care for the novel. I will watch out for other books by this author because his voice is strong. He just needs to find his story.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well imagined book. It was an informative read, that also told a fascinating story. Totally conceivable, totally unusual. Geographically this book brought me like a local to towns in Socorro, New Mexico, Queens, NYC, towns in Oklahoma, Texas, Connecticut, and in Germany, and brought me throughout Europe east-west-north and dragged me through Vietnam during the American war and touched into the Middle East. This book brought each character into full relief, and I was free to feel as I wished about each one, having been given enough sense of them to not be working only from a caricature. These were real people, felt people.
This book would be best served read slowly, and over a long span of time, read during a time when there are not so many other good books to read. I found myself skimming a few times when the information Scibona was providing, while worthwhile, was not necessary to the book's forward progress and was not astonishing enough to hold me anyway.
Some things he made clear to me:If you don't let someone talk to you you will never know, yet mourning requires absence.
War should be mourned.
I look forward to reading Scibona's first book, and then to reading anything else he writes. I like his heart and his eye.

[Chaya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tried to get through this tortuously written novel and just could not make it. I had no interest in Vollie, not the way he is portrayed here, in sometimes confusing and contradictory ways. Any time a bit of writing makes me scratch my head and wonder what the motivations were for the character's actions, I know I'm dealing with an author who trades more in atmosphere, psychological ambiguity and obfuscation, all to the detriment of clarity and character. The writing style was a bit dense and confusing (I will give the author the benefit of the doubt and say deliberately so) and, as I said, I am more a fan of clarity over style.

[Richard]

Stream of consciousness as a self-conscious tediously useless genre been attempted since tropic of cancer. But Scibona has found a way to embed exquisitely poignant jewels amidst the litter to make this a worthy journey. His masterful song of the eternal human struggle suspended twixt hope & futility, tenderness & murder, banal & serene, crushing guilt & unlimited grace makes worthy prayer to the conundrum of the lotus & the mud. Painful to read, it's bardo journey of exquisitely crafted honesty.

[Les · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing is brilliant and effusive. The story was pointless. I kept waiting and hoping for all of the misery and dreadfulness to be in service of something, but in the end there was nothing.

[David Eisler · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautifully written, well-conceived story that disappointed me in the end by falling prey to a pessimism that I sadly saw coming. I was really hoping that Scibona would not give in to what I felt was an "easy" narrative choice, but that's what happened.

I applaud the book for its good points: the prose is magnificent, the pacing is perfect, and the characters are well-developed and flawed in the most human ways. There is a great depth to the relationships, and plenty of important themes to generate discussion. I guess I was just hoping that the bleakness that lurks behind nearly every page would not overwhelm the possibility for a more optimistic outlook. Then again, maybe it's me who is naive in that hope.

[Karyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing in this book is beautiful. This is the story of fathers and sons, both born and made. The main character, Vollie, is hard to get a feel for in the first half of the book but he is more fully fleshed out in the second half. This makes sense since he spends his life trying to disappear himself. I couldn’t put this book down simply because the writing is so good.

[Googoogjoob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ambitious but ultimately disappointing. A very frustrating novel. 2.5/5, rounded up. I feel like there's a version of this book I'd like much more than this one. But I'm stuck with this one. Alas.

It flirts with being a war novel, a thriller, a bildungsroman, a melodrama, yet never really commits to being anything; but it's not really bits of these things in an exciting inter-genre way so much as it just feels unfocused, like it slumps under the weight of its ambition. It ends up feeling like a Hallmark movie with more blood, really. There are some pretty obvious themes: war, masculinity, secrets, above all abandonment. But it doesn't feel, ultimately, like the book has much to actually say about these things, as much as it flirts with them. This is a book about broken men stuck in an intergenerational cycle of abandonment of varying types and intensities, who end up terrible and unhappy in varying ways as a result; but that's kind of it. There's no suggestion of greater meaning to any of this, just maybe hints that this is something intrinsic to masculinity, or to modern society; all potential redemptive acts or ways out of the cycle are undercut or fail to materialize. It's just not that interesting, ultimately.

Vollie/Tilly, despite being the protagonist for a large majority of the book, is kind of deliberately a nonentity- he has basically no ego, and his motivations and drives are obscured rather than revealed by the glimpses of his thoughts that we get. As for the other characters- Elroy is kind of a self-destructive void, all of Tilly's worst features made worse, while Janis/Willy is a small child, not really capable of sustaining much character development. Neither get much "screen time" compared to Tilly.

There's some excellent writing in this book. Scibona's style is confident and, when it works, potent in a sort of indirect, in-passing way. Certain passages- a Vietnam-haunted truck driver breaking down on the road, sunset over early-70s Brooklyn, Tilly's final confrontation with his sometime handler Lorch- are technically immaculate, and approach being beautiful and elusive and moving in a way that I suspect the entire novel is meant to be. But they aren't really enough to save the book from its meandering plotting and lack of thematic follow-through. Scibona's very very good at the technical aspects of expressing himself, but not so good at the communicating what he has to say part. The book also, frankly, feels kinda overlong (though at 419pp it's not actually that long, objectively); it feels like Scibona likes reading his own writing a bit too much, and he meanders.

There are also a few odd infelicities in the writing, mostly technology-related, which stick out all the worse for how thoroughly-developed and researched most of the rest of the book is: a random woman in small-town Oklahoma having a cell phone in the early 90s; a pair of nurses "watching a video on a smartphone" in 2004; being allowed access to one's bank account on the basis of body odor analysis in the near future; some absurd future-history stuff about "Slavic Wars of Reunification" happening in the 2020s, resulting in the Baltic states being subsumed into Russia, or something. They feel sloppy and silly.

Learning, after having finished this novel, that the introductory segment (the first 22 pages out of 419) was originally published as a standalone short story nine years before this novel was published... makes a lot of sense.